Challenges remain for many as the need for remote learning makes demands for high-speed web access.
One of the aspects of my job as a technology analyst over the last 40 years is that I have had to travel a great deal. I have close to 2.5 million miles on American Airlines, 1.1 million on United, and hundreds of thousands of miles on two other airlines.
This kind of travel puts a lot of wear and tear on a person’s body, and I have paid for it. It has impacted my long term health from my many trips to China, Taiwan, and many cities in Europe on long haul flights. I am sure it has aged me too.
Though some of my travels included side trips that allowed me to be a tourist at times, 90% of my travel has been for business and needed to be for in-person meetings for many reasons. Most tech industry growth has come on the backs of tech executives and their staff who have had to travel the world to make that technology of all types the backbone of our digital age.
But I admit that this much travel became wearying after a while. I often wished that many of my cross-country or international meetings could have been done via video conferencing.
The first commercial concept of video conferencing debuted in 1964 at the World’s Fair in NYC. Since then, it has caught the imagination of millions worldwide, but it took 30+ years to become a proper business communication tool.
We did have an early version of this for students and more sophisticated tech users in August of 1994 when the first webcam, the QuickCam, was introduced and was compatible with the Mac. And before that, Cornell University created the CU-SeeMe video conferencing software that worked on Macs in 1992 and Windows by 1994.
But the first iterations that were created specifically for business use came from Cisco with their TelePresence system was introduced in 2006.
Two years later HP introduced their “Halo” whole room video conferencing system that initially cost $350K, in 2008.
I had the privilege of using both systems when they were introduced, and from that point on, I was hooked on video conferencing providing for face-to-face meetings. Secretly, I began hoping that this would catch on with all of my clients to reduce my travel substantially.
However, these systems’ prices were very high, and, only the large companies could even afford them. In fact, in 2008, Cisco had only sold 2,000 of them and all to huge corporations.
Historically speaking, there was one significant development that made video conferencing a household name with consumers. That came about when Apple introduced FaceTime for the iPhone.
For the first time, users had a mobile tool and could give them a video link to family and friends. FaceTime was also available on the Mac, giving Apple users their first true video conferencing system. Android added video calling soon after, and most people developed a strong understanding that video calls were now available to them. However, most of these video calls were personal and very seldom used for business purposes.
By 2016, we started seeing other video calling and conference systems emerge, and they were dramatically cheaper than the $350K version HP introduced in 2008.
Up to 2020, video conferencing for business use was spotty. Last year, even with clients having a conference room and desktop video systems at their disposal, I still traveled over 50,000 miles, including a trip to Beijing last November. My wish to get everyone using video calling was still a distant dream.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Suddenly, businesses who believed that people in the office delivered the most productivity were forced to use a video conferencing system to survive.
They sent droves of workers home, and almost overnight, CEO’s adopted video conferencing as one of their most essential tools for their businesses.
Perhaps the biggest recipient of this video conferencing trend has been Zoom. In the chart below, look at Zoom’s staggering revenue growth. If there ever was a company that was at the right time and right place, it has been Zoom.
Zoom continues to dominate across the business and consumer markets as the pandemic force everyone … [+]
Other collaborating tools like Web-Ex, Skype, and Microsoft Teams and many others have now added virtual video offerings making it easy for just about anyone to get on a video conference or call at the push of an invite link.
Because this technology has now become ubiquitous and as easy to use as accessing a web site, one would think that it has now leveled the playing field for just about everyone who has a PC, tablet or smartphone to join in for either work, school, or leisure purposes.
But the sad truth is that even though video conferencing has gone mainstream, there are still many pockets in America where internet transmission speeds that could support video conferencing are not available.
There are rural areas where internet connections are very slow to non-existent. My son Ben, who works from home, has a farm in an area just 20 miles south of San Jose, CA. This area has many farms and is not considered a high priority for bringing in high-speed connections to this area. Even a year ago, he was lucky to get even 10 megabytes of throughput so he could get HD streaming media and have high-quality video calls.
This lack of broadly available high-speed transmissions in the rural US became much more apparent when kids had to leave school last spring and rely on the internet and video classes to go to school. Many people have seen the stories and pictures of kids sitting outside of Starbucks or McDonalds to use their WIFI connection to attend their classes.
According to an FCC report in 2016, 39% of people living in rural areas in the US lacked high-speed broadband. By 2020, that estimate had dropped to 21%.
But that is little consolation for the families in rural areas, especially with kids who must rely on high-speed broadband for school. From an educational viewpoint, it is not a level playing field for kids. For them, there is no “Zoomacracy”. Too many are still not able to get the internet connections they need for remote learning. And even when they can go back to school in person, they still need a high-speed internet connection to do homework and use video to augment their learning.
This issue of rural broadband or the lack of it is both political and economic. Much of the management of getting high-speed bandwidth to cover all rural areas in the US is in the FCC and government politicians’ hands. The FCC holds the keys to expanded radio waves to deliver these high-speed connections and manage its expansion to these underserved areas. The politicians have the keys to the money to ensure that this happens.
Both Democrats and Republicans support this expansion, but it is still not resolved, and these rural areas continue to struggle, especially the school-aged kids in these areas.
Then there is the other issue that some in these rural areas could not afford high-speed connections even if they were available. This financial burden means that even when high-speed broadband does expand to cover all rural areas, it needs to be affordable. That means some subsidy, most likely from the government. Or some tax initiative at the state level to support this program.
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the role of video conferencing, and it should be an equalizer for business, education, and consumers. As of today, it is not, especially in rural areas that still need coverage.
It needs to be a high priority for whoever leads the US at the government level in the next four years. If not, I fear that those who cannot get these high-speed connections will fall farther back from their urban neighbors, and the level playing field for all in the US will continue to be a pipe dream for many.
